Lord Hilsborough said, “That the arguments urged against the clause were reducible to those of power, right, and expedience. That the Parliament has power to prolong itself, is plain from the very debating upon it; that it has a right, appears from the Triennial and Septennial Acts, and from the Sixth of Queen Anne; and for the expedience, it is a known maxim, _salus populi suprema lex esto_. That in the case of a Rebellion, would a Parliament allow of its own dissolution, which would bring on the tumults of new elections? or in case of a plague, would any wise Government give occasion to great and populous assemblies, when it would even be unfit for the Parliament itself to meet? That the event in question might include all the others, and probably would some of them; and that the prolongation now in Debate would not be actual, but discretionary, while the circumstance of the manner in which it came recommended must strike the breast of every man.” Bowes, Vyner, and T. Pitt, spoke against the clause; Charles Yorke for it. Sir John Rushout observed that T. Pitt had made the King’s Message the foundation of the Debate, and then had objected to its being pleaded. He was called to order, and so were some others; Gray and Dowdswell then spoke against, and Southwell for the clause, which was carried at half an hour after seven, by 258 to 81. Then was read the clause to prevent the young King from marrying before the expiration of his minority, unless with consent of the Regent, and the major part of the Council; and to annul any such marriage, and to declare all the persons concerned guilty of high treason. This clause, which on the very face of it is a flat contradiction to the established opinion of the Church of England, which never heard of dissolution of marriage for political reasons, had passed uncontroverted through the House of Lords, undisputed by the Bench of Bishops. So obsequiously now did the sages of the Ecclesiastic Courts bow to temporal power! Fazakerley alone in the Commons remonstrated against it, and showed “the dangers that may arise from pronouncing the King’s wife guilty of high treason, and her children illegitimate; and the mischiefs it may occasion, as he may marry her again after his majority--unless you will divest the Crown of the prerogative of pardon, and that in the dearest case, and will bind the Regency not only to prosecute a new species of treason, but to enforce the penalty. If this illegal Queen may be pardoned, and then espoused again, what confusions, what contests may not spring from the different children she may bear during her first and second marriage, when one son may plead his birthright under the new establishment, the other his seniority under all the known descriptions of legitimacy in the Church of England.”